Tuesday 3 September 2013 15.27 EDT
First published on Tuesday 3 September 2013 15.27 EDT

Israel fired a target missile to test a new missile defence system on Tuesday, triggering alerts across a region braced nervously for impending international military strikes against Syria.

Although Israeli officials said the test launch was a routine exercise, it caused jitters in global financial markets amid the military and diplomatic uncertainty since chemical weapons were unleashed on Syrian civilians last month.

Some observers saw the test's timing as a conspicuous display of Israel's military power ahead of an expected escalation of the Syrian crisis in the coming weeks, and possible retaliatory attacks by the Damascus regime against Israel.

The Israeli defence ministry confirmed it had launched a Sparrow target missile at 9.15am local time on Tuesday. It said the test of the Arrow anti-missile system was successful.

Israel said the exercise had been conducted jointly with the US. An American official in Washington said: "Israel routinely fires missiles or drones off its shores to test its own ballistic defence capabilities."

A Pentagon spokesman, George Little, said the missile test was long-planned and unrelated to Syria. : "This test had nothing to do with the United States' consideration of military action to respond to Syria's chemical weapons attack," he said.

Russia initially sounded the alert, saying its radars at Armavir, near the Black Sea, had detected the launch of two ballistic "objects" in the area, fired from the central Mediterranean towards the east.

A Syrian source told Lebanese television that nothing had been detected by its early warning system.

Israel's defence ministry said in a statement: "The experiment tested enhanced capabilities of a new type of target missile from the Sparrow series. Arrow anti-missile defence systems, including radars and a command and control system, were also tested."

It added: "The Sparrow missile successfully launched and performed its planned trajectory, in according with the test plan." It was detected and tracked by the Arrow III missile defence system. "All the elements of the system performed according to their operational configuration."

The Sparrow simulates the long-range missiles of Syria and Iran and is used for target practice by Israel's ballistic shield, Arrow.

Uzi Rubin, former head of the Arrow system, told the Associated Press that the test was "completely technical. Nothing connected to Syria." He said its "only message" would be that Israel has "good missile defence systems".

Israel has redeployed most of its anti-missile systems to the north of the country over the past week amid fears that the Syrian regime could launch attacks on its neighbour – with whom it is still technically at war – following US strikes.

The US-funded missile defence systems are effective at intercepting incoming missiles but Israel acknowledges that it has insufficient capacity to protect the country in the face of a sustained onslaught from Syria or Lebanon.

On Tuesday, the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, repeated previous warnings against attacks on Israel. "The reality around us is changing. I want to say to anyone who wants to harm us: it is not advisable," he said. Israel has promised to respond with force to any attack. Israel's anti-missile systems were a national "wall of iron", he added.

The Israeli defence minister, Moshe Ya'alon, said Israel needed to carry out field trials of its defence systems. "A successful trial was conducted to test our systems. And we will continue to develop and to research and to equip the Israeli Defence Forces with the best systems in the world," he said.

Last week, Netanyahu authorised the call-up of a limited number of army reservists in the expectation that the US could launch strikes over the weekend. Thousands of Israelis flocked to distribution depots to collect gas masks.

However, since Barack Obama's announcement on Saturday that he would seek authorisation from Congress before an attack, the mood in Israel has calmed. Most military analysts say retaliatory action by the Syrian regime is unlikely, though possible.

An Israeli government official said US military action was now not expected for about two weeks. The democratic process in Washington, due to start on Monday, was likely to take the best part of a week, he said, and Israel did not anticipate the US launching a strike around the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur, which this year will be the 40th anniversary of the 1973 war between Israel and its Middle Eastern neighbours.

The US is expected to take action against Syria after it said the regime crossed a "red line" drawn by Obama over the use of chemical weapons against civilians. Damascus denies responsibility for the incident. The alleged chemical attack by the regime in the suburbs of Damascus on 21 August is estimated to have killed between several hundred and 1,300 civilians.

The Syrian opposition claimed that a Syrian forensic expert who had defected to Turkey would soon present evidence that the Syrian regime used chemical weapons, killing more than two dozen people, near Aleppo in March.

Abdeltawwab Shahrour, head of the forensic medicine committee in Aleppo, failed to appear at a news conference on Tuesday. A coalition spokesman, Khaled Saleh, said security concerns had kept him away and that he would appear in the coming dayssoon.